


Day 4: AU

by TinaCentury



Series: Much, Much More than a Moment [4]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, MamoUsa Week, MamoUsa Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 20:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19383907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinaCentury/pseuds/TinaCentury
Summary: MamoUsa Week 2019Day 4AU





	Day 4: AU

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, lovelies! So, if you follow me on Tumblr, you may have seen a post about how I'm slowing down a bit for this week. I'm still intending to finish; it's just not all going to happen this week due to vacation, academia, work-life balance, etc.
> 
> Up today: AU! This is a real tonal shift from the other day's ride on the angst bus, so, enjoy!
> 
> Also, lots of lots of thanks to FloraOne for the beta! Oh, and also, massive thanks to Sailor Moon Turtle for arranging this whole week!

It was just a flu shot.

A quick, easy flu shot. Chiba Mamoru scanned Harvard's student healthcare center waiting room, trying to distract himself from the gnawing anxiety in his gut. He hated shots.

The entire setup of the place was completely foreign to him. It was far too...open. About everything. There were posters on the wall describing the ins and outs of various STDs. There were bright purple and red medicine sample packs with "GET FAST UTI PAIN RELIEF" boldly emblazoned on them.

And then there were the condoms. Heaps and heaps of condoms.

When Mamoru first arrived at the healthcare center, he'd placed his hand in a bowl filled with colorful wrappers, expecting to extract one of those nondescript doctor's office hard candies. Instead, he'd flushed crimson when found a lime green condom 2-pack between his fingers, and thrown them back in the bowl as if he'd been scalded.

So many condoms. There was that bowl of them on the table in the waiting room. A basket of them by the front door. Plastic trays of them on every shelf or table.

He guessed everyone at Harvard was having a lot of sex.

It was his own fault he was here. He'd been avoiding getting the shot for weeks, and, at this point, the hospital he was doing his first clinical rotation at only had enough dosages left for high-risk patients. He needed the shot before they'd let him start tomorrow, and the student healthcare center still had plenty left.

Three years ago, Mamoru had decided to leave Japan for Harvard Medical School. And while he sometimes missed the trappings of home, he didn't really have anyone there to miss.

He hadn't looked back.

"Chiba?" a voice called from the hallway at the front of the room. Mamoru tore his gaze from the poster on the wall that described chlamydia in excruciating detail to the chipper blonde in front of him, a hot blush rising in his cheeks.

Blue clashed with blue as he stood, a not-wholly unfamiliar feeling fluttering through his stomach and shooting straight to his groin.

Christ, Chiba. One handful of condoms and you're immediately attracted to the next woman you see.

He swallowed, his mouth dry as he took in the twin streamers of hair that fell almost to her feet, the slight upturn of her nose, the curve of her hips.

"Mamoru Chiba?"

He nodded dumbly.

"Follow me."

Mamoru followed the woman down a short hallway into an examination room, the roll of paper on the exam table making that awkward crinkling sound as he sat, the bottoms of his feet grazing the floor.

He examined her further as she sat on a red stool and rolled over to him, bending down to make a note on her clipboard. Her scrubs were light pink, and the stethoscope that hung around her neck was covered in hot pink fabric adorned with tiny, smiling rabbits.

She looked up at him, and he could have sworn she faltered for a second, her eyes resting just a little bit too long on his left bicep.

Her eyes flew back down to her clipboard, cheeks pink, then suddenly exclaimed at a less-than appropriate decibel level as she read something on the paper in front of her.

"Tokyo! I'm from Tokyo!"

It took Mamoru a second to realize she was suddenly speaking Japanese, and quickly.

It was like the floodgates had opened. She chattered away about how terrible the Japanese food in Cambridge was, and how she'd literally give her left arm for the best meat buns in the world from the conbini down the street from her high school.

"And, I mean, I guess it's ok here," she continued. "The milkshakes are good. And have you had those cookies you can get delivered at three in the morning? Those are amazing! But," she looked around furtively before lowering her voice. "Don't you think Americans can be kind of weird?"

Mamoru chuckled and couldn't help but nod in agreement before he noticed that she seemed a little...scattered. He watched, frowning, as she used her foot to press off the floor and send her stool flying to the wall of cabinets and drawers across the room.

Did he just see her elbow slam into the counter?

Was that a wince?

She twisted every which way on her stool, rolling drawers and pulling out supplies seemingly at random. Brow furrowed, she muttered to herself. "Ok...thermometer...cotton swabs...needle….blood pressure cuff...alcohol wipes...AGH!"

Mamoru jumped at her yelp of pain.

She had rolled back to the exam table, arms laden with a pile of supplies, but one of her impossibly long pigtails had gotten stuck in a drawer's wheels. She glowered at the offending hair before giving it a firm yank that succeeded in bringing it back to hang at her side.

"Anyway," she continued as if nothing had happened, barely stopping to take a breath in between words. "It's my friend Ami's fault that I'm here. She's a genius-goes to MIT. I didn't know what to do after high school, so I came to visit her and just never left?"

She dumped the pile of supplies on the shiny silver medical instrument stand next to the exam table. It tipped over with a loud crash and she immediately dove after it, grasping for everything that fell and coming up with only the black blood pressure cuff precariously dangling from her finger.

She looked up and smiled apologetically at him. "Oops."

He probably should have walked out, questioning the quality of Harvard's student healthcare and whether this was really the place he wanted to attend medical school at afterall as he was.

But there was something about those clear blue eyes staring up at him.

She began to collect the items that had fallen, arranging them more carefully on the stand this time. "So eventually I needed a job. And Ami tried and tried to talk to me about what I wanted to do and I just didn't know but I do like to help people, you know? So of course she found this medical assistant program at Bay State and OF COURSE she said it wouldn't be bad since it was only a year but Ami is crazy and loves school and I think it's the worst but I listened to her anyway and I scraped through and now here I am but honestly I'm not sure it's for me."

Mamoru raised an eyebrow. "You don't say?"

He could feel that his expression had slipped into what his friend Motoki endearingly referred to as his jackass look. He tried to straighten the muscles in his face into a more neutral countenance, but it was too late.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He tried to backtrack. "It just...doesn't seem like you, uh, like this very much...you might be better off working somewhere where you, uh, couldn't hurt people...like behind a desk."

He never had been good with words.

She crossed her arms over her chest and indignantly huffed, "You're awfully rude for a grown man who's afraid of a flu shot."

What the hell?

She smirked knowingly at him before plopping back down on her stool and reclaiming her clipboard. "I'm good at reading people. So, let's get this over with before Hurricane Usagi puts you in any more danger."

Usagi. A smile pulled at the corner of his lips. It was cute. It suited her.

But he couldn't help but notice her slightly dejected tone. He really could be such a jerk sometimes.

"Birthday?" Her question interrupted his thoughts. She was a little bit more detached now, her earlier enthusiasm having dissipated.

"August 3rd."

She scribbled on her clipboard, the only sounds in the room her pen scratching against the paper and the dim him of the fluorescent lights above.

"Occupation?"

"Medical student."

Her eyebrows shot up quizzically. Mamoru was used to that reaction on the opposite end of things, when classmates and colleagues discovered his fear of needles.

"Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Drink?"

"Occasionally."

"Have you been sexually active in the last year?"

A hot blush bloomed on Mamoru's face, traveling to the tips of his ears. God, he hated this question.

"Um...No."

At that, her head shot up, a momentary flash of surprise in her eyes. But she quickly regained her composure and continued, setting her clipboard aside before she stood and reached for the vial on the exam table.

Mamoru's stomach twisted, and he couldn't help but turn his head away. "I don't like to see the needle," he offered sheepishly.

"That's ok." Her tone was soft. Calming. "You'll be all right."

Mamoru's body jerked involuntarily, partially reacting to the cold alcohol wipe that was suddenly rubbing his upper arm, but more so to the delicate, calming touch that moved in soothing circles across his skin. He couldn't see her with his head turned as it was, but he couldn't help but take a deep breath of the pleasant vanilla smell that now surrounded him.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah," he bit out, gritting his teeth.

"Okay. One, two-"

And on the count of two, Mamoru was surprised to feel nails dig into his arm in a somehow gentle pinch. "What the?" Then a brief, sharp, pain, and it was over. He whirled his head back to see her bent over his arm, holding a piece of gauze to his skin.

She grinned up at him. "My mom used to do that when I was little. Distract me with a little pinch right before the needle went in." She shrugged. "Weird, but it works."

And it had. It had taken him out of his own head at just the split second he needed to be, and the shot really hadn't been so bad.

"You're all set, Chiba-san", she murmured, pressing a band-aid to his arm, a faint smile on her face. "Good luck in medical school."

She moved to usher him out of the room, and he panicked. He didn't want to walk out and never see this fascinating tornado of a girl with the strange hairstyle and personality that could go from enthusiastic to angry to dejected to tender in the course of a few minutes again. He needed to know her, to learn everything about all her different facets. To talk to her about Tokyo. To have warm cookies with her at three in the morning.

"Mamoru," he blurted out, jumping to his feet from the exam table.

Her brows knit in confusion as she turned, hand resting on the closed door's silver knob.

"Call me Mamoru. And, I'm really, really sorry for insulting you. You were great. Really" He took a deep breath before the words came tumbling out. "I know I can be kind of an ass. I'm just...not great with people. I'm quiet and sarcastic and kind of boring-my ideal night involves half a glass of sake and a really good book. I've been told I have terrible fashion sense. But…"

His gaze flew flew from the drab gray wall to her wide, blue eyes, hand tangled in his inky hair.

"Hurricane Usagi, was it? Would you like to have dinner with me?"

**Author's Note:**

> AU is weird for me to write and I'm not sure I succeeded at it. Hope you enjoyed (tell me if you did?) I'll be back with First Kiss soon!


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